AMCmageddon Wrap-Up! A Special Report from Margaret's Nearly Monthly News
So, I recently got an email from AMC Theaters with the headline: "Take advantage of your A-List benefits!"
Oh man. Been there. Done that. And now I’m writing the newsletter!
From May 27th to June 26th, I used my A-List benefits to see 15 movies. Which is a lot by any metric you might care to name.
(Indeed, I looked up statistics on American movie-going and discovered that about 20% of Americans are considered “frequent movie-goers.” I then discovered that a “frequent movie-goer” for the purposes of the study was someone who sees one or more movies a month. I had somehow assumed the bar would be higher.)
So in the month of June I was… an excessive movie-goer? And when I told people about what I was doing, the most frequent question I got was, “Are there even fifteen movies out this month?"
Yes. Yes, there were.
(Caveat: I live in a large city, that helps a lot.)
Here, without further ado, and in all its glory, is my month in movies:
Week 1 - Memorial Day Triple-Feature
The Fall Guy, Young Woman and the Sea, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
I kicked things off with a bang by seeing three movies at a single multiplex on a single day. Would I do that again? 100% yes. I invited friends along, we grabbed lunch and dinner between films and the whole thing was like a mini-vacation.
At first glance, these films have very little in common, but on closer examination, The Fall Guy is a stunt-heavy action comedy about making a movie in Australia. Young Woman and the Sea features a female protagonist undertaking a perilous journey against terrible odds. Furiosa is a stunt-heavy action film about a female protagonist undertaking a perilous journey against terrible odds that was filmed in Australia.
So really, it only makes sense to watch them all together.
Week 2 - NGL, pickings were slim
Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
Traditionally, Memorial Day represents the start of the summer movie season. But after Hollywood was shut down for most of 2023, this one was off to a slow start. Yes, I could have gone to see Garfield, but the the line must be drawn somewhere.
Instead, I found Bad Actor: A Hollywood Ponzi Scheme, a documentary I’m pretty sure was just doing a two week theatrical release so it would be Oscar eligible. I re-watched Spider-Man: No Way Home because I liked it the first time, and it was out so why not? Then rounded out the week with Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes because when I called my friend Alasdair and said, "Are either of the giant ape movies out now any good?" His reply was: “Yes! BOTH!”
Week 3: Indies Week!
Robot Dreams, Babes, Run Lola Run
Like Bread Week on The Great British Baking Show. We all knew this would come. After all, I went to a small liberal arts college in the mid to late nineties, the perfect time and place to fall hard into the indie film revolution. And two out of three movies this week were not just independents, they were foreign films to boot. (How classy!)
Robot Dreams is a beautiful animated feature about a dog and a robot searching for connection, Babes is a spot-on comedy about two women navigating their friendship as partners and kids come into the mix, and Run Lola Run is about a woman who really needs to dump her loser boyfriend, like, yesterday.
(Knowing now that I was a college student in the 90s, you would think that I would have already seen Run Lola Run. In fact, having been a college student in the 90s, I was convinced I had. But about ten minutes in, I realized that while I had read reviews and analyses and even seen clips, I had never actually watched the whole thing. So, bonus!)
Week 4: Summer Kicks In
Inside Out 2, Challengers, Firebrand
This week I had a choice to make, one slot left and two movies I wanted to see to fill it. I placed a bet that Tuesday would be around for another week and lost. On the other hand, Firebrand vanished nearly as quickly. In retrospect, pushing Inside Out 2 to week 5 would have allowed me to see both, but there are no regrets in AMCmageddon, only movies we swear to watch at home when they come to streaming.
Challengers was not initially on my list, but I had promised my friend Katie we could see it together and this was our chance to make that happen. I’m so glad we did because I ended up loving it.
Week four was also where the magnitude of my undertaking really hit me. I had seen ten movies and somehow still had half again as many to go! I told Katie: "If AMCmageddon is a marathon, week 4 is definitely heartbreak hill." Without missing a beat, Katie said, "But Margaret, heartbreak feels good in a place like this."
Well, touché.
Week 5: The Home Stretch and an Oath Fulfilled
I Saw the TV Glow, Thelma, Bad Boys: Ride or Die
I honestly enjoyed every film I saw this month, but some of my favorites came in week 5.
I Saw the TV Glow was straight up amazing. I got to see Thelma at a screening followed by a live Q&A with writer/director/editor Josh Margolin and star June Squibb because when I woke up at 4am one night, I was scrolling the AMC app instead of social media and snagged a seat before they sold out.
Bad Boys: Ride or Die was perhaps not life-changing, but Katie and I had sworn we would make a pilgrimage to see a movie at the Porter Ranch 9 where AMC filmed their meme-worthy, "We come to this place for magic," Nicole Kidman spot.
The chance to walk in her footsteps and watch a cinematic battle against a giant albino alligator?
Priceless.
Also, the only other thing playing at Porter Ranch I hadn’t seen was Garfield.
And with that, my month of movies came to a end. But of course that’s not the end of the story. My hard-hitting analysis below the break!
Random Statistics
Because I am me, I kept a spreadsheet of all the movies I saw along with various notes and statistics. So, for certain values of fun, here’s the breakdown:
Money
Total price of the fifteen tickets had I not been an A-List member: $233.49, plus an additional $33.85 in online ticket fees.
The cheapest tickets were $5 each for Run Lola Run and Spider-Man: No Way Home. The cheapest new release was $7 for Babes thanks to AMC's discount Tuesdays. The most expensive movie was $26.49 for Furiosa opening weekend in Dolby.
Average ticket price came to $15.57, slightly cheaper than my 2024 overall average of around $18.
My actual cost: $24.95, which works out to $1.66 per ticket.
Would I have normally spent more than $200 seeing fifteen movies? Absolutely not. So it’s not like AMC is putting money back in my pocket, but for someone like me, who likes movies, lives close to several AMC theaters and works in entertainment, the question of whether or not A-List is good value for money is something of a no-brainer.
Yes, but what about my valuable time?
Well, the running time for all fifteen films turned out to be six minutes shy of 29 hours. Which is a long time, but not that much spread out over 29 days.
The shortest was Run Lola Run at 1 hour and 20 minutes. Spider-Man and Furiosa tied for longest at 2 hours and 28 minutes each. Somewhere between an hour forty and two hours seems to be the sweet spot for theatrical releases, which I appreciate. (When you add in 20 minutes of trailers, it’s easy for a 2 hour-plus epic to be more threat than promise.)
What about Hollywood's moral degeneracy?
Out of the fifteen films I saw, six were rated R, five were rated PG13, two were rated PG and two (Bad Actor and Robot Dreams) were not rated (NR). If there were any G-rated films in release that month, I was unaware of them.
Some of that ratings distribution was on me though. After all, I could have seen Garfield.
Final Take Aways
Getting to seeing a bunch of movies, often with friends, was awesome, but it wasn’t the only thing I got from this adventure.
Most strikingly, I completely re-set my “how often is it normal to go to the movies” meter. I mean, I’ve been an A-List member for years, and can count the number of times I’ve seen three movies in a single week on one hand. But once I got into the habit, the whole thing started to feel… normal.
Fifteen movies was a daunting proposition, but the A-List model forced me to break it down into manageable weekly chunks. And once I had publicly set my goal, it gave me permission to actually do it. I not only had an excuse, honor practically required me to be, well, excessive.
And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this was also the month I found myself finishing books I had “temporarily” set aside, watching tv shows I had started and then forgotten, and diving into a fresh spec script.
One accomplishment, even an arbitrary one, paved the way for more.
So, my final take-away is to do the thing that brings you joy. And then do it again. Because it might become a habit. After all, what did I do the week after AMCmageddon ended?
I went back to the movies.
Three more times.
And That’s it for AMCmageddon!
Got movie recs? Am I sleeping on The Garfield Movie? Drop me a line! Otherwise, I'll see you in August.
And because it wouldn’t be the Nearly Monthly News without an update from Duolingo, I’ll let Lin have the final word:
